338 COUNTY COUNCIL [CHAP. x

whole, and to convert them into a machine of no mean
working order. The Deputy-Chairman dwelt on
Rosebery's willingness to give help and guidance to
individual members, and on his ubiquity in and out
of the Committee rooms, and his power of instantly
taking up the questions there under consideration.

It was estimated that, from the opening meeting to
his last appearance as Chairman on July 8th, he had
presided over the Council forty-four times, and had
attended 280 committee meetings. It has been noted
above how mischance dogged Rosebery's footsteps in
his successive admissions to political office : to vary
the metaphor, his boat was never borne on the rising
tide. This time fortune was kinder, for though the
difficulties were many, in overcoming them he attracted
universal admiration and applause. It is not too
much to call it the truest success of his whole career ;
a success won in a minor field, if you will, but a success
unalloyed by any jealousy among colleagues, or any
misapprehension of his motives or of the purposes for
which he was striving. Not least, he was given the
chance of making friendships which would not have
blossomed otherwise, but which bore fruit for many
years. His coadjutors in office have been named, as
has John Burns; but there were others, like John
Benn, an embodiment of London energy and observa-
tion, with whom intimacy increased as time went on.

The main current*of fife through 1889 flowed on,
though more slowly, past the great central shoal of
County Council work. To anxious gazers westward
the murky atmosphere of Ireland seemed to grow
somewhat clearer. The merciless exposure of the
Pigott forgeries in February—which the Government
endeavoured to counter by insisting that, after all,
the Irish leader and his band had applauded intimida-
tion and had not denounced crime—was followed by
a mutual effort to forgive and forget on the part of
Liberals and Home Rulers. There was an Eighty
Club dinner (March 8th) with Frank Lockwood, the
most popular of Liberal lawyers and wits, in the Chair.